Recettes Cameroon

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Njama Njama (Cameroonian Greens)

Njama njama is greens blanched, squeezed dry and then cooked through a tomato, onion and chilli base. It is one of the most eaten vegetable dishes in Cameroon, particularly in the North West Region, and it is usually served with corn fufu. The plant it is named after is African nightshade, *Solanum scabrum*, also called huckleberry, a leafy green grown across Cameroon and to a lesser extent Nigeria and Kenya. It is not the same as the toxic nightshades the name might suggest; the cultivated leaf is a staple vegetable and has been for a very long time. The source is honest about a substitution that most sources would hide, and it deserves credit for it: this recipe uses turnip greens rather than actual njama njama, because the real thing is hard to find outside Cameroon. Collard greens and watercress are named as alternatives. The result is a good dish but it is not, strictly, njama njama, and that has been flagged. The technique is worth taking seriously. Blanching, then an ice bath, then squeezing out as much water as possible, is what keeps the greens green and stops them watering down the tomato base. Four bunches of raw greens reduce to about three cups cooked. Khati khati, grilled chicken in tomato sauce, is the usual partner.

50 minEasyCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Ndole

Ndolé is Cameroon's national dish, bitter leaves cooked down with a thick paste of ground peanuts, with meat, fish or prawns, and it is what appears when an occasion needs marking. It comes from the Sawa people of the Littoral province, around Douala, and it has travelled from there to become the dish most associated with Cameroon anywhere in the world. The source's description of its standing is not overstated: it is treated with the seriousness of a flag. The two components are what make it. Ndolé itself is bitter leaf, the same Vernonia amygdalina used in Igbo ofe onugbu, washed repeatedly to draw out the bitterness. The ground peanut paste is the counterweight, giving richness and body that turns what would be a sharp green into something deep and heavy. Getting the balance right between the two is the whole skill of the dish. Too little washing and it is harsh; too much peanut and it is cloying. Prawns, beef, fish or a combination go in, and it is served with plantain, miondo or rice. **Contains peanut**, unavoidably, it is half the dish.

MediumCameroon · African

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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Achu Soup (Yellow Soup)

Achu soup, called yellow soup for its colour, is a Cameroonian speciality from the North West region, served with pounded cocoyam. The colour is the result of a chemical reaction rather than a spice. Red palm oil is worked together with limestone water, kanwa, ground limestone dissolved and strained, and the alkali reacts with the oil to turn it from deep red to a bright yellow, at the same time thickening it into a smooth, slightly slippery sauce. Nothing else produces that colour, which is why the soup cannot be made without it. Achu itself is the accompaniment: cocoyam boiled and pounded to a smooth, elastic paste, served in a mound with a well pressed into the centre for the soup. Eating it has its own form. The soup is poured into the well and the achu is taken from the edges with the fingers, dipped, and eaten. It is a dish that takes a long time to prepare and is associated with occasions. Achu spice, a regional blend, and assorted meat including tripe and cow skin complete it. **Uses limestone.** Traditional in culinary quantity; measure rather than estimate.

HardCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Pepper Soup with Cocoyam or Plantain

Pepper soup is the thin, fiercely spiced West African broth built on meat or fish, chilli and a set of aromatic seeds that give it a flavour nothing else reproduces. This version comes with cocoyam or plantain cooked in the pot, which turns a light soup into a full meal. The ingredients place it in Cameroon rather than Nigeria, whatever the general framing suggests. Njansang, the crushed seed used as a thickener and flavouring, and bush pepper are Cameroonian pantry staples, and Cameroon pepper, the dark powder ground from dried scotch bonnets, appears throughout. Nigerian pepper soup leans instead on ehuru, the African nutmeg, and on utazi and uziza leaves. They are cousins rather than the same soup. Pepper soup is served in restaurants and bars across the region, and it is genuinely a category rather than a single recipe: catfish, goat meat, chicken, cow foot and assorted offal all have their own versions, several of which are on this site. The source makes extensive medicinal claims for it, that it cures fevers, clears congestion and aids weight loss. None of that has been carried across. It is a hot, restorative bowl of soup, which is a reasonable thing to say about it, and it is not medicine.

2 hrEasyCameroon

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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Recettes Cameroon